Happy National Fried Chicken Day!

Everybody loves a good piece of fried chicken and as evidenced by National Donut Day, everybody definitely celebrates a day where it’s deemed okay by the Hallmark gods to indulge in their guilty pleasures. However, if you’re looking for something more than just finger lickin’ good, our food patrol team has scoured the best places in town to get it! Check out our list of must-check-out fried chicken dishes below. All these recipes are addictively good while still maintaining a healthy balance, they’ll probably get a thumbs-up approval from your doctors as well.

If you’re lucky enough to visit the night they’re serving their famed Buttermilk Fried Chicken, life as you know it will never be the same. Trust us we’ve been lucky enough to try it three times and it was totally life-changing every time.

“The High Country Fried Chicken” ($8) – this petite 5 piece country fried game hen, with seven secret spices, buttermilk, preserved lemon, Dijon, and cornflakes was juicy and delicious. It had a unique spicy sweet aftertaste that suggested star anise as one of the “secret” ingredients.

Signature Fried Chicken entree: They debone the chicken, rub it with one of their 12 different house made spice blends and let it absorb into the meat overnight. They dip the chicken pieces into buttermilk, then roll it in a flour/spice mixture, and fry southern style, in a cast iron fryer. It’s such an elegant riff on this comfort food. Some argue it’s the juiciest and has the perfect flaky crust. Highlights include Sesame fried chicken, Madras Curry Fried Chicken; Five Spiced Fried Chicken.

Last November, the team at Restaurant 1833 sat down and taste-tested over 75 variations of fried chicken to come up with the perfect recipe for their “Fried Chicken Sundays.” Chef Mezick experimented with buttermilk baths, cornflake crusts, rice pearls, red curry, Wagyu grease, powdered-zucchini dustings, whipped-cream aerators, deep-frys, pan-frys and all the different types of fats that a liver can process. It took 6 hours but they finally ate their way through dozens of variations until they came up with the perfect recipe involving sous vide, duck fat, overnight buttermilking, herb flour, Sriracha foams and Frank’s Red Hot sauce. The winning recipe is now served Sunday nights, family-style, and reservations quickly sell out as up to a week in advance.

Cupola’s Italian Fried Chicken is marinated overnight in rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, lemon and garlic then battered in a light and crispy almost tempura style mixture. It’s served with fried fennel wedges and some sliced lemon.